Explained: How the new BIOS versions are causing higher temperatures

[citay]

Note: This thread mostly contains the investigation and explanation for the higher power draw on the latest BIOS versions.
It doesn't go so much into detail about the solution, which can be found in my Guide: How to set good power limits in the BIOS and reduce the CPU power draw.


A lot of people have reported higher CPU temperatures after updating to the latest BIOS version for their 600-/700-series Intel board. Especially after updating to the version containing the 0x129 microcode revision (hotfix for the voltage spike problem with the true 13th/14th gen CPUs), or newer versions.

Now, right from the start, the logical explanation for a higher power draw (when applying the same workload, and if the power limits don't mask anything) would be a higher voltage. But what exactly is causing the higher voltage, which is leading to higher power draw, leading to more heat, leading to higher temperatures?

The hot candidate is "CPU Lite Load", which influences the the CPU voltage via the so-called AC and DC loadlines. The important one is the AC loadline, a voltage added by the BIOS to make up for electrical properties of the CPU socket and such. The background is not so important to understand, the main thing is, the higher this value is, the more voltage is added. This not only takes into account the electrical properties of the board and the CPU socket, it also can make really bad CPU samples run stable (when set appropriately by default), or it can make CPUs be unstable from factory (if set too low by default). Finally, if set too high by default, it will make the CPUs draw too much power and run too hot.

But by what mechanism is there now more voltage added for the CPU? Does MSI choose a higher default mode for CPU Lite Load, and why? I wanted to find out, and since the stable BIOS with the 0x129 microcode just came out for my board model (at the time of writing this), i put it to the test. Now, i am using an i5-13500, so, not a true "Raptor Lake" CPU like a 13600K or 14600K for example (which are definitely affected by the microcode bugs), but an "Alder Lake" 12th-gen-based one. So, it being a 12th gen in disguise, it actually neither needs (nor uses) the newer microcode, it uses Alder Lake microcode instead. But still, i wanted to see if my CPU's voltage and thus power draw also go up.

So, on the old/previous BIOS version, i had CPU Lite Load optimized to Mode 4 for my specific CPU.
This means, Mode 4 is stable for that CPU, with a bit of stability headroom (Mode 3 was verified stable, then i raised it by one step).

First, taking some baseline numbers. The default for "CPU Lite Load" - with my CPU and my board, on the older BIOS version 7D32v1H - was Mode 12:

Click to enlarge

I did some other optimizations there, like enabling all power-saving mechanisms plus Intel Speed Shift Technology. Most of that only lowers idle power draw though.

Then, updating to 7D32v1J:

After the update, here's the revised cooler selection screen, which is really the power limit selection screen:

I chose the middle option, even though i already knew that - with my cooler and CPU - i would not even reach the middle option's limits. So i also could've chosen the bottom option with the maxed out limits, wouldn't matter in my case. My cooler can easily deal with my CPU's heat, so i could optimize the fan curves for low noise output. But for most people, choosing the middle option "MSI Performance" is a good starting point, from which they can lower the power limits if necessary. Because "MSI Performance" includes the highest power limits that make sense to allow.

Note: The BIOS first has the values for the first option "Intel Default Settings" loaded. So after the middle option is selected, the menu under OC will still show the "Intel Default Settings" values, until you press F10 to save and exit, then the "MSI Performance Settings" are applied. But we know those three options are not that well-fitting for most people anyway, because everyone combines a different CPU with a different cooler. I just chose the middle option because it happens to have the maximum values i would allow for any CPU (even an i9). If there is any thermal throttling with those limits, they have to be optimized to the individual cooling capabilities, which i explain in my guide.

Now, after the update, we're on the new BIOS (the one with the 0x129 microcode). Let's check what the new default settings are. Remember, CPU Lite Load on Auto, in the old BIOS version, resulted in Mode 12. This was still quite high for my CPU, considering it was fully stable at Mode 4. So there's eight steps worth of additional voltage added to VCore, in order to make all CPUs of varying quality work.

Now on the new BIOS:

Blimey! The new default is Mode 18! I wonder what that will do to the voltages, the power draw, the heat and the temperatures? Nothing good, i can already tell you.
Of course, some other settings were also reset. I enabled them all again manually, but kept CPU Lite Load on Mode 18 for testing.

Now, about the testing, for Cinebench R15, i used Cinebench R15 15.0.37 with Extreme Edition mod, just to explain the oddly low scores for that.

For power draw testing, i mostly relied on an energy meter that's plugged in at the wall socket (actually, at the UPS), for the power cable going into the PSU. This energy meter / power draw measurement device is very exact and, unlike the sensors in the system, cannot be wrong. Additionally i took some measurements from the "CPU Package Power" sensor via HWinfo, which is the CPU-only power draw.

Here is the full comparison:

What can we see from this? All the scores stay basically the same, no matter which mode is active for CPU Lite Load. On some boards, for it to be like this, one would have to disable the "IA CEP Support" setting like i describe in my Guide: How to set good power limits in the BIOS and reduce the CPU power draw. On my board however, this setting is not available (as shown on the screenshots), and with my CPU and board combination, IA CEP clearly doesn't intervene, otherwise the scores would be cut in half with CPU Lite Load Mode 4. But they all stay almost identical within the margin of error.

So, the performance stays the same, but what about the power draw? On the old BIOS, using the default Mode 12 is already quite inefficient. Power draw can be a few dozen Watts higher than it would need to be for this CPU, due to higher-than-necessary Vcore that's applied by Mode 12. So optimizing this setting down to what the CPU actually needs for full stability (in my case, eight steps down to Mode 4) pays off nicely. Everything about how the CPU is running improves, and the scores stay the same. If my CPU was actually hitting a power/temperature limit, then the scores would even improve with Mode 4, because compared to Mode 12, the "power/temperature budget" simply lasts longer, and the CPU can clock higher within those limits.

But now look what happens on the new BIOS, MSI have a new default of Mode 18. This is a catastrophy, now my CPU is not just running eight steps above what it would need for full stability, it's running 14 steps above it! We're seeing 30-50W higher power draw (CPU only, for the whole PC it's up to 90W more) than necessary, and that's just on my lowly i5-13500. On an i7 or i9, the difference would be tremendous, because there are more cores and higher frequencies. And of course, the scores stay the same, the stability stays the same (there is no "more stable than stable"), but everything else has worsened considerably!

So this explains how the temperatures can be so much higher on the latest BIOS versions: The mode for CPU Lite Load has been raised considerably by default. Because it looks like what MSI is doing now is, they're adding a huge safety headroom for the default CPU voltage, most likely in an attempt to stabilize certain CPUs that have already degraded and have a bit of instability.

Their rationale might be, now that there's a voltage limit in place to take care of the voltage spikes, they can happily raise the default voltage (via a higher default CPU Lite Load mode) to stabilize shaky/unstable CPUs, basically the victims of the voltage spike bugs in the microcode. And that actually works for those CPUs that suffered degradation. But for everyone else with a stable CPU, this makes everything a lot worse!

So it has become even more important to try and lower the voltage, otherwise a stable CPU will have needlessly high power draw in all load states, effectively lowering the power and temperature budget and ultimately costing performance. This becomes evident due to instantly improved performance as soon as you undervolt (provided the CPU is hitting a power/temperature limit, which most 14th gen i7/i9 will do unless your cooling is out of this world).

Once you go by my guide, then any higher temperatures can be completely taken care of, because in step 1) you set safe power limits for your cooling, and in step 2) the voltage will be lowered to what your CPU sample actually requires (plus a bit of headroom). This is literally all that is required to bring down the temperatures, either to the level of the older BIOS version when those things were already optimized, or to a better level than ever before if they weren't.

Note: If you undervolted with an offset before (instead of lowering CPU Lite Load), or a combination of the two methods, then the offset undervolt will now happen from a higher baseline voltage. So the best thing in that case is to take note of the previous mode for CPU Lite Load, and apply it again on the new BIOS. The default mode in the newest BIOS version is crazy high! I don't know what they're thinking. Well, i have an idea, but i don't think they're doing anything good by this. For the vast majority of users, the CPU will run worse than before. Going by my guide linked at the very top, this can luckily be reversed.

To round this off, let's look at the "calculation efficiency" of the system in Cinebench R23 with different settings (higher is better):
Old default, CPU Lite Load 12: 119 points per Watt.
New default, CPU Lite Load 18: 100 points per Watt.
Optimized CPU Lite Load Mode 4: 145 points per Watt!

Mode 12 wasn't very efficient to begin with, and the new Mode 18 is just horribly inefficient.
Mode 4, which is still fully stable with my CPU and achieves the same performance, has much higher efficiency.


Lastly, on the far right, i did an additional test, checking the benefits of setting CPU Lite Load to Advanced (using the same AC loadline setting that Mode 4 results in), but optimizing the DC loadline setting so the VID matches the Vcore under full load. In CPU Lite Load Advanced, you can select values for AC and DC Loadline seperately, without having some preset combination which can have the wrong DC Loadline value. So now you can set the DC Loadline so it results in the correct power draw numbers. Doing that involves using HWinfo Sensors, creating full CPU load, then looking at the CPU's VID requests (in the "current values" column), which is the voltage the CPU asks for from the board, and comparing it to the current VCore value. If those are near-identical, the correct DC Loadline value has been found.

I have done this, and the result for my CPU on my board was AC loadline 30, DC loadline 117, which can also be read out in HWinfo later:

The concerns about CPU Lite Load "Normal" (that it won't always show the correct CPU Package Power anymore because the DC loadline is usually not properly adjusted to where it would need to be) are somewhat put into perspective. We have a mere 6W difference from the reported CPU power draw to the "actual" CPU power draw, under the highest load any normal program can create (CB 23 is fully multithreaded AVX load, but Prime95 uses dirty tricks, it's only used for stability testing). This is not gonna make or break out power limits, if we have had to set some.

And even with the reported power draw being slightly off like this on CPU Lite Load "Normal", this doesn't affect us much, we can just go by the maximum CPU temperature to inform us if our power limits are properly dialed in, or if we still need to adjust them according to our cooling. Plus, explaining CPU Lite Load "Advanced" makes it more complicated, which means less people will do it. So i think CPU Lite Load "Normal" is a good compromise.

By the way, this is what resistance/impedance in mΩ (milliOhm) the different CPU Lite Load settings correspond to, valid for both old and new BIOS versions:
CPU Lite Load Normal, Mode 4: AC loadline 0.3 mΩ, DC loadline 0.3 mΩ (this is what i lowered the mode to, verifying that it's stable)
CPU Lite Load Normal, Mode 12: AC loadline 1.1 mΩ, DC loadline 1.1 mΩ (this is the default on the older BIOS versions)
CPU Lite Load Normal, Mode 18: AC loadline 1.7 mΩ, DC loadline 1.7 mΩ (this is the way too high default on the latest BIOS version)
CPU Lite Load Advanced, AC 30 / DC 117: AC loadline 0.3 mΩ, DC loadline 1.17 mΩ (so this way you can set them both directly).
Note: It's possible that some other board/CPU combinations have somewhat different values for a certain mode. They can be read out in HWinfo, as shown above.


Conclusion:
The explanation for the higher temperatures is very simple: Needlessly raised default mode for "CPU Lite Load", causing higher voltage.

Never has it been more important to optimize each Intel CPU in each system individually, according to the cooling and according to what voltage it's running stable with. On the default settings of the latest BIOS versions, the voltage / power draw / heat / temperatures (one influences the next) are higher than ever! With any CPU that is running into power/temperature limits (so, either power limits that you have set to protect your cooling, or failing to do that, the thermal throttling that can happen), the performance will decrease as a result of the new BIOS defaults!

Luckily, with the help of my guide, all those parameters can be improved again: Voltage down, power draw down, heat down, temperatures down, performance identical or up!
This has no downsides other than investing some time for finding good values and testing that it stays stable. Your CPU and your cooling will be very thankful for that effort.

 

[citay]

I think I do have that retrofit kit,

Good, so it's not that.

and I do not think its about my case itself, cause I did have some good temps on this 13900k, but now its struggling.

It depends what power limits you had set in the old BIOS. A 13900K is able to draw >280W in Cinebench Multi when running without power limits. This is enough to cause trouble even for a powerful 360mm AIO. So if you had good temperatures, you need to define where, and under what circumstances. Were they good in gaming? Gaming doesn't fully load the CPU, in games the CPU is around 120W power draw on average. See it all here: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-13900k/22.html

But if you had good temperatures in something like Cinebench, which is a pure CPU benchmark and does load the CPU fully, then it was surely because you had some pretty low power limits set for the CPU in the BIOS. Because your cooler isn't influenced by different CPU settings in the BIOS (unless the fan curves were changed), it always has a specific amount of heat it can get rid of, until it gets overpowered. Meaning, it will thermal-throttle at the same point pretty much.

Of course, the new BIOS can (and will) make the CPU draw more power than before for the same clock speeds, because it raises the voltages via higher CPU Lite Load default mode. But you'd still get the throttling right around the same kind of power draw as before. And if you set the same power limits as before, you'd see the same temperatures as before. Just at a lower performance, because now it has to clock lower, since it uses higher voltages (unless you lower CPU Lite Load again).

When you compare gaming temps to Cinebench temps, this is not a fair comparison. Gaming taxes the GPU much more than the CPU. You need to compare apples to apples. And we need to find out why a 360mm AIO, which on paper should deal with 200W of heat no problem, suddenly has to depend on 150W power limits set for the CPU to be able to deal with it. Because, as i said, you can cool 150W with a decent tower cooler. So some of the cooling performance is lost somehow in your system.

Of course, you should try to lower CPU Lite Load to the lowest stable mode (plus one step higher again for headroom), but you see, even setting a low mode, a 13900K will still have a pretty high power draw, more than 150W. So this alone will not solve everything. The cooler is not performing to its standard. Do you have photos of the system?

 

[FlyingScot]

Not to beat a dead horse (because I really want to help you stabilize your system as well as keep it cool for component longevity) but you should try removing the front panel (and dust filter if installed) to see how much your case cooling is holding you back. You can do this experiment once you finish following CiTay’s advice on how to dial in your CPU power usage parameters.

Here’s a snapshot of how much your temps could improve (see pic below). And that’s just the CPU temps!! Your component temps might do even better.

Try playing the same game for the same length of time (35mins should do it) while using HWInfo64 to monitor peak temps for all your components. Compare CPU, PCH, MOS, M.2, GPU Core and VRAM, and DDR4 modules. Optionally, you could check SSD and HDD temps. I guarantee you will be surprised. However, remember that your front fans are driven off your CPU temp, so the cooler the CPU gets the slower those intake fans will spin. So, for a real apples-to-apples test, you will want to fix your case fans at the same RPM (try Max or 1200RPM). If you feel brave, report back on your findings. There might be a couple of things you could do without spending too much loot. Cheers!

 

[andrefelipe915b402e3]

Good, so it's not that.



It depends what power limits you had set in the old BIOS. A 13900K is able to draw >280W in Cinebench Multi when running without power limits. This is enough to cause trouble even for a powerful 360mm AIO. So if you had good temperatures, you need to define where, and under what circumstances. Were they good in gaming? Gaming doesn't fully load the CPU, in games the CPU is around 120W power draw on average. See it all here: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-13900k/22.html

But if you had good temperatures in something like Cinebench, which is a pure CPU benchmark and does load the CPU fully, then it was surely because you had some pretty low power limits set for the CPU in the BIOS. Because your cooler isn't influenced by different CPU settings in the BIOS (unless the fan curves were changed), it always has a specific amount of heat it can get rid of, until it gets overpowered. Meaning, it will thermal-throttle at the same point pretty much.

Of course, the new BIOS can (and will) make the CPU draw more power than before for the same clock speeds, because it raises the voltages via higher CPU Lite Load default mode. But you'd still get the throttling right around the same kind of power draw as before. And if you set the same power limits as before, you'd see the same temperatures as before. Just at a lower performance, because now it has to clock lower, since it uses higher voltages (unless you lower CPU Lite Load again).

When you compare gaming temps to Cinebench temps, this is not a fair comparison. Gaming taxes the GPU much more than the CPU. You need to compare apples to apples. And we need to find out why a 360mm AIO, which on paper should deal with 200W of heat no problem, suddenly has to depend on 150W power limits set for the CPU to be able to deal with it. Because, as i said, you can cool 150W with a decent tower cooler. So some of the cooling performance is lost somehow in your system.

Of course, you should try to lower CPU Lite Load to the lowest stable mode (plus one step higher again for headroom), but you see, even setting a low mode, a 13900K will still have a pretty high power draw, more than 150W. So this alone will not solve everything. The cooler is not performing to its standard. Do you have photos of the system?

Not to beat a dead horse (because I really want to help you stabilize your system as well as keep it cool for component longevity) but you should try removing the front panel (and dust filter if installed) to see how much your case cooling is holding you back. You can do this experiment once you finish following CiTay’s advice on how to dial in your CPU power usage parameters.

Here’s a snapshot of how much your temps could improve (see pic below). And that’s just the CPU temps!! Your component temps might do even better.

Try playing the same game for the same length of time (35mins should do it) while using HWInfo64 to monitor peak temps for all your components. Compare CPU, PCH, MOS, M.2, GPU Core and VRAM, and DDR4 modules. Optionally, you could check SSD and HDD temps. I guarantee you will be surprised. However, remember that your front fans are driven off your CPU temp, so the cooler the CPU gets the slower those intake fans will spin. So, for a real apples-to-apples test, you will want to fix your case fans at the same RPM (try Max or 1200RPM). If you feel brave, report back on your findings. There might be a couple of things you could do without spending too much loot. Cheers!

Guys, really appreciate the help you are giving me! Last week I already bought a new case, that will hopefully be less hot, maybe it will arrive tomorrow, then I will clean everything, put my thermal paste again, and check that AIO screws.

But just to be more straight, which settings you guys think I should try to start? Maybe 200W and Lite Load 9? Should I keep CEP enable or disable? Any other BIOS setting I should be keepeing and eye on?

I'll report back when I have more info with the new case!

 

[FlyingScot]

Guys, really appreciate the help you are giving me! Last week I already bought a new case, that will hopefully be less hot, maybe it will arrive tomorrow, then I will clean everything, put my thermal paste again, and check that AIO screws.

But just to be more straight, which settings you guys think I should try to start? Maybe 200W and Lite Load 9? Should I keep CEP enable or disable? Any other BIOS setting I should be keepeing and eye on?

I'll report back when I have more info with the new case!

That sounds good. I think you’ll be much happier with a better case. And just like you indicated, it’s a great opportunity for a fresh start.

I‘m not fully up to speed on your current settings, but I’m sure CiTay can help you in that department. One thing I would say is perhaps take a look at the entries in my survey spreadsheet (see a link to the main page in my signature below). If you read Section 2 of my Survey guide it should give you an idea of how the Cinebench R23 results were collected. You should be able to make some direct comparisons for both performance and temps. I’m also expecting a couple more 13900 CPU entries in the near future.

One potential tuning approach would be to follow CiTay’s guide while keeping CEP disabled. That is the least complicated approach and can get you some quick results. For a little prep work, I would suggest the following reading material: https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?...-power-temperature-tuning.404785/post-2292101

 

[citay]

But just to be more straight, which settings you guys think I should try to start? Maybe 200W and Lite Load 9? Should I keep CEP enable or disable?

200W should be perfectly doable with a 360mm AIO which is not held back by any other potential problems. CPU Lite Load 9, didn't it crash for you before? Maybe your individual CPU is not a winner of the silicon lottery, so maybe start with Mode 12 and work your way down. Mode 12 should be stable for most CPUs, it's a decent starting point to see what is happening. Around Mode 9 you already start needing to disable IA CEP if your board has the setting, and definitely if you lower the mode further (because otherwise IA CEP would start to massively intervene and kill your performance).

 

[andrefelipe915b402e3]

200W should be perfectly doable with a 360mm AIO which is not held back by any other potential problems. CPU Lite Load 9, didn't it crash for you before? Maybe your individual CPU is not a winner of the silicon lottery, so maybe start with Mode 12 and work your way down. Mode 12 should be stable for most CPUs, it's a decent starting point to see what is happening. Around Mode 9 you already start needing to disable IA CEP if your board has the setting, and definitely if you lower the mode further (because otherwise IA CEP would start to massively intervene and kill your performance).

So maybe start with 200W and Lite Load 12, with CEP disabled?

I didn't understand the CEP here, why it should be enabled or disabled.

Lite Load 9 did crash for me, but maybe on this new case it may be different? Idk. I didn't try Lite Load 9 with 200W cap.

 

[citay]

I explain more about IA CEP in my actual guide. When you lower CPU Lite Load below a certain point, IA CEP will start to get in the way, then it has to be disabled. You will see this from the Cinebench score: If it starts to be a lot lower all of a sudden, then it means that this "IA CEP Support" is throwing a spanner in the works. Turn it off to get your normal performance back (or better than normal, if you are in a power limit).

 

[FlyingScot]

I didn't understand the CEP here, why it should be enabled or disabled.

To fully understand how you can use CEP is to fully understand the entire loadline mechanism, IMO. You can either disabled it from the outset or you can follow CiTay’s advice and wait for it to kill your Cinebench scores before you disable it. You will likely have two settings to disable, one for all/13th gen and one for 14th gen. CiTay’s guide shows these settings and where to find them. I believe I mention where to find them in my Survey Guide.pdf.

 

[andrefelipe915b402e3]

I explain more about IA CEP in my actual guide. When you lower CPU Lite Load below a certain point, IA CEP will start to get in the way, then it has to be disabled. You will see this from the Cinebench score: If it starts to be a lot lower all of a sudden, then it means that this "IA CEP Support" is throwing a spanner in the works. Turn it off to get your normal performance back (or better than normal, if you are in a power limit).

I think I did get this some days ago, cause I got a good temp on cinebench but score was around 18k (usually is 33k), so that should be CEP enabled.

But if I don't care about cinebench score, CEP disabled is better for gaming also?

 

[citay]

Performance will be bad everywhere when it becomes bad in Cinebench. So then you need to disable IA CEP. I don't see a problem in that, it has way more advantages to run the CPU with lower voltages, as long as it stays stable.

 

[LbNplHVtEeA]

Great guide! It is indeed interesting that undervolting results in better CPU utilization, higher clocks, and better performance. Using (Mode 16) for 14900K results in clocks staying at about 4800Mhz during Cinebench R23, while undervolting with Mode 9 results in clocks fluctuating between 5000-5100Mhz most of the time and higher Cinebench R23 score.

Why do you enable all the power-saving C states? Doesn't that reduce performance due to CPU having to exit and enter sleep states all the time?

 

[FlyingScot]

It is indeed interesting that undervolting results in better CPU utilization, higher clocks, and better performance.

Yep. In the world of CPUs, voltage is everything! Lower voltage leads to lower power usage, which leads to lower temps. That allows the auto-boosting algorithms (Turbo 2, Turbo 3, TVB, eTVB, ABT - i.e. the acronym soup kitchen) to stretch their legs a little farther while keeping to the same power and temperature limits. If you implement manual core ratios then lowering voltage will guarantee lower power usage and lower temps at the same frequency.

 

[FlyingScot]

Why do you enable all the power-saving C states? Doesn't that reduce performance due to CPU having to exit and enter sleep states all the time?

I think the main advantage of C-States is to reduce power consumption and wear-and-tear for many of your normally daily PC tasks like MS Office, Internet Browsing, email, youtube, and of course when you step away from your PC for 20mins, etc. I think it’s a reasonable tradeoff. However, let’s say you only play games on one of your PCs. You could in theory benefit from disabling C-States and tuning certain Windows settings for reduced latency at the expense of higher power usage.

 

[citay]

Why do you enable all the power-saving C states? Doesn't that reduce performance due to CPU having to exit and enter sleep states all the time?

Exit latencies for coming out of power-saving are usually in the range of nanoseconds or a few milliseconds. For example, you can look up the exit latencies of the deep C-state modes (i've talked about them here before, on notebooks it even goes down to C10) and they are very low. It will completely blend in with less than a mouseclick.

It is a common misconception that the system responsiveness is better when avoiding power-saving. For example there have been numerous tests made with the different power plans "Balanced" vs. "High Performance", and the broad agreement is that "Balanced" gives you 99.99% of the performance and responsiveness. "High Performance" will mainly cause higher power draw in idle and higher temperatures, but the performance will not improve. It can't, really, because with Balanced, the CPU uses its turbo modes in the optimal way. With other modes, you'd just force high CPU frequencies to be used all the time, which makes no sense without the appropriate CPU load. I've also talked about this here before. It's similar when you try to disable all the power-saving options in the BIOS, is almost exclusively has downsides. The latest BIOS versions will enable more power-saving than before, because Intel finally put their foot down with their setting recommendations and make a few things mandatory now.

You can activate all power-saving you can find and then see if you notice any additional lag anywhere (or lower performance) compared to when something was not enabled. If there is no additional lag or lower performance (and there shouldn't be), then why not enable it? Plus, once the CPU or certain cores have a workload to deal with, they are awake anway, so they will perform the same, no matter which power state they were in before.

On paper, certain power-saving can slightly cost performance, but in practice it is very rare to actually notice anything. But on the power bill, you could definitely notice it if you turn off all power-saving.

 

[andrefelipe915b402e3]

Performance will be bad everywhere when it becomes bad in Cinebench. So then you need to disable IA CEP. I don't see a problem in that, it has way more advantages to run the CPU with lower voltages, as long as it stays stable.

New case is here!

Tested 200W and CEP Disabled

but you can notice a drop on the clock speed

Cinebench scored 31,5k and max temp of 89C, but it did thermal throttle for a milisecond, right after I started cinebench test (weird?)

 

[citay]

Nice. So you have gone from...

I just tried 200W and it was 100C on cinebench and thermal throttle.

to...

Cinebench scored 31,5k and max temp of 89C

This is now more what an AIO should be able to handle. Still a bit lower than i'd think for a 360mm AIO, but your best result yet, so we can't be too critical.

You didn't state which CPU Lite Load you set now, probably 12? If 9 and 10 were unstable once before, then 12 is probably a good setting. Run a couple stress tests to confirm its stability and then you could keep it like this. Don't worry about very slight thermal throttling, we can see that your CPU doesn't even reach 90°C on the whole, so you are getting very short triggering of the throttling bit by perhaps one core. That is nothing to worry about, completely different from thermal throttling approaching 100°C.

 

[andrefelipe915b402e3]

Nice. So you have gone from...

to...


This is now more what an AIO should be able to handle. Still a bit lower than i'd think for a 360mm AIO, but your best result yet, so we can't be too critical.

You didn't state which CPU Lite Load you set now, probably 12? If 9 and 10 were unstable once before, then 12 is probably a good setting. Run a couple stress tests to confirm its stability and then you could keep it like this. Don't worry about very slight thermal throttling, we can see that your CPU doesn't even reach 90°C on the whole, so you are getting very short triggering of the throttling bit by perhaps one core. That is nothing to worry about, completely different from thermal throttling approaching 100°C.

I'm testing Lite Load 7 right now. I did score 35,5k on cinebench with max of 85C.

Now playing Diablo 4 with 70C max, and no crashes yet.

But my clock speed seems to be changing. It won't be on 5.5ghz all the time. Should I do something to make it be fixed on 5.5?

 

[citay]

Don't worry too much about clock speeds. Games, they don't cause full CPU load, it fluctuates around mid-load. So you have some cores with almost nothing to do, bringing down the overall clocks. In Cinebench, you will have the CPU hitting the power limits, so it also has to clock a bit lower to observe them, so it can use lower voltages and have lower power draw. As long as the score/performance is ok, this is nothing to be concerned about. For stress-testing the CPU, i link a couple of tools like OCCT in my guide.

 

[andrefelipe915b402e3]

Don't worry too much about clock speeds. Games, they don't cause full CPU load, it fluctuates around mid-load. So you have some cores with almost nothing to do, bringing down the overall clocks. In Cinebench, you will have the CPU hitting the power limits, so it also has to clock a bit lower to observe them, so it can use lower voltages and have lower power draw. As long as the score/performance is ok, this is nothing to be concerned about. For stress-testing the CPU, i link a couple of tools like OCCT in my guide.

Lite Load 7 crashed on warzone, althought it went just perfect on counter-strike and Diablo 4.

Trying Lite Load 8 now, and it seems to crash on warzone also.

Cinebench clock speed will drop to 4.2ghz, is that normal?

 

[citay]

If it crashed on Mode 10 before, you're probably best off with Mode 12 or so. Some CPUs you have a bit of bad luck and you can't lower the mode drastically. Although, Mode 12 is still decent, your default should've been somewhere between Mode 16-22?

Cinebench clock speed will drop to 4.2ghz, is that normal?

Depends which one you're looking at. The overall speed, sure, because it also includes the E-cores which clock much lower than the P-cores.

If you want to do better, you need to make your cooling perform even better. Remember, i said before, a 360mm AIO, if everything is set up and configured right, should be good for 250W of heat, not just 200W. So even though you improved from your old case with more restricted airflow, it's still not at its peak performance. These things are not that easy to tune without sitting in front of the PC. The airflow has to be considered, the fan curves have to be considered, even the radiator placement.